Now at about the same time Storm and Sophia were starting back across Waterloo Bridge, as they were heading for their drink in the Savoy Hotel bar, the taxi numbered 331 was driving down the Strand past the hotel’s entrance. With the scarred man squinting his piggy eyes at the windscreen, the cab chugged along in the thick traffic without stopping. Just ahead, teeth bared, the city’s griffin loomed rampant on its pedestal. Harper Albright looked out at it from the cab’s backseat.
She clutched her dragon stick tighter with both hands. Pressed her lips against her knuckles, her lips trembling, her knuckles white. Here, where the West End became the City, where the flash and flicker of theaters gave way to the dimmer, narrower canyons of Fleet Street, she had her last notion of escape. She might rap on the cab’s windows, she thought. She might gesticulate at the thinning crowds of passersby, or at the other drivers edging along the clogged thoroughfare. It would be a long shot, given the noise of traffic, given the nature of cities. And it would be a risky business, given the death-rays of vengeance beaming out of the eyes that now and then glanced at her in the cab’s rearview mirror. She had no doubt the driver remembered that notch she had made upon his chin with her sword. He was just looking for an excuse to even the score.
But once they left the crowds behind, once they entered the deserted city streets, her last chance would be over. She would be at the mercy of her enemies. She knew it was now or never.
And she just sat there. Hunched over her stick. Lip-gnawing her knuckles. Afraid—melting inside with fear—but silent, unresisting.
The cab went on, towards the canyons.
What a stubborn old woman she was. She could’ve kicked herself for it. But the fact was she had to satisfy her curiosity. It was that more than anything that held her there. She had to know what was going to happen next.
Of all the questions left unanswered about Iago—of all the thousand questions—the greatest was this: Why hadn’t he killed her yet? Out of pique if nothing else. Or in his determination to keep her from finding the very manuscript she now had hidden inside her cape. Why the warnings, why the threats? Why not just snuff her out?Her own uncomfortable suspicions on the matter tantalized her. The desire to confirm or disprove them—the desire to discover any answer at all—the desire simply to know more—were such powerful drives in her that she felt there was no overcoming them. This imprisonment in a London cab, this drive to nowhere, to somewhere: it felt to her almost like fate.
An aggravating business. It angered her. Here she was, being sucked into a vortex, being carried down and down into certain danger, and her most powerful emotion—aside from this liquifying fear—her most powerful emotion was anticipation. Which was confused in her mind with that other, hateful anticipation: the anticipation she had felt in the old days at the prospect of seeing him again.
What a foolish old woman. She really could have kicked herself. She clutched her stick, gnawed her knuckles, angry. Afraid. Excited.
Then, to her surprise, the cab pulled over. Stopped. Just on the far side of the griffin, still within sight of the West End crowds behind it. The movement wrenched her from so deep a study that for a moment she didn’t recognize the place. She saw the scarred driver give a glance to the heavyset newsie standing just outside on the pavement. The newsie, in turn, glanced at two ancient and enormous iron doors set in the wall behind him, shut tight.
The driver turned in his seat. Leered at her.
“Here you go, darling. Just what you asked for. The end of the world.”
The newsie darted forward. Yanked the door open. Stuck his horny hand in at her. “Right this way, love.” He was leering too, leering down at her.
“And none of that Smith and Sons nonsense,” said the driver with a rueful nod at her stick. “It won’t help you anyway. It’s too late for all that now.”
“I should’ve pinned you like a bug when I had the chance,” Harper grumbled. But she slid across the seat towards the open door.
She’d be damned if she’d take the newsie’s hand. She worked her way out herself. And when he touched her shoulder, she sloughed him off with a vehement shrug. Out in the open air, she smoothed and straightened herself. The newsie hovered near her. Tried to take her elbow. She glowered him back. “I’ll break those sausagy fingers if they touch me again.”
He scowled, but kept away. Contented himself with a rough gesture at the iron doors.
“All right, all right,” she groused.
Hoisting her satchel strap over her shoulder, she waddled, muttering, towards the wall. Slowly, as if magically, the doors opened inward at her approach.
Harper’s teeth clamped, her breath caught as the corridor beyond was revealed to her. She saw a downward slope through a constricted close. She had a glimpse through windblown sycamore branches of the west porch entry to the church of the Knights Templar. She knew where she was now. The entrance to the Inner Temple Court.
The newsie dropped back behind her. She passed under the entryway. The great doors swung shut.
She was alone in the dark alley with the damp night wind.
She halted. Harrumphed. Looked around her. Sneered angrily at the descending passage. But this was all bravado, in case anyone was watching. If she’d been melting with fear in the cab, she was practically a puddle now. It was another long moment before she could bring herself to head down the slope to whatever lay below.
The wind rose higher, a hoarse moan of warning between the walls on either side of her. Just what she needed, just what the scene required to feel really terrifying. But she moved on, regardless, her squat figure pulled into itself, her stick stabbing the pavement as if she would drive it right through the stone, her Borsalino bowed against the cold.
When she glanced up, she saw the Temple Church slowly moving into view from behind the alley’s corner, through the trees.
The Knights Templar—guardians of Jerusalem after the Crusaders took it, after they slaughtered its paynims and established the rule of the armies of the Prince of Peace; protectors, in legend, of the Holy Grail; pattern of the Teutonic Knights of Germany and rival of the Knights Hospitalers; soldiers, bankers, politicians; and finally, outcasts accused of Satanism and infanticide; disbanded, tortured, burned at the stake: they had built this church in 1185, some sixty-five years after their inception. Its round tower—one of only five round church towers in England—was modeled on Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its castellated crown lowered blackly against the dull sky as Harper moved under it.
And there was more of the eerie wind business—the tree branches whispering and chattering all around her. And there were the ancient coffins oddly shimmering at the tower’s base. And there was the western porch of the church right before her, its obscure entryway: a chiseled Norman tympanum receding to the shut door. That recessive shape seemed to her to give a tide to the darkness, a tide that was dragging her in. She had again that irritating sense that she had come to this place helplessly, in answer to an overpowering summons. She had an awful feeling that everything to come was expected, had been expected for a long time, forever.
She felt sickened—but not surprised—when she heard a muffled thud as of a body dropping, and the heavy church door began to swing open.
She stopped before the archway. Steeled herself, squared her shoulders. The door continued to swing back until the interior of the church—or, that is, the utterly lightless murk of its interior—was displayed before her.
“You always did love an effect,” she muttered to no one between her teeth.
Then, her stick clicking on the stone, she stepped under the arch. Staring blankly ahead, she hobbled under the tympanum. She entered the church.
At once, the door swung to behind her, shut with an echoing boom. She’d been expecting that, but it didn’t matter, she couldn’t help herself: her whole body went so tense it thrummed. Now the dark was complete. It surrounded her. She could see absolutely nothing. Could only feel the church’s dank and stony atmosphere. Could only smell—what was it?—something fetid and hot, something panting, dangerous, close. He was there. With her. She knew it. Circling her, predatory. She was so frightened she began to shiver. She wanted to shout out in fury: This is unworthy of you! But she didn’t. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. And anyway, it was nonsense: this was right in his line.
“You know, you remind me, in some ways, of the Pacific salmon,” he said from directly behind her.
Again, she couldn’t help it—she gasped, startled. She spun towards his voice.
“I think I must’ve taught you about the Pacific salmon. I always took great pains over your education, as I’m sure you remember.” He was already moving on, moving along the circular walls. Harper turned where she stood, trying to follow the sound of his voice. “Really, it’s an amazing creature. The salmon. It smells its way out of the ocean, upriver. Smells its way hundreds of miles, against the tide, against all obstacles. Finally comes back to its home waters, its headwaters, the place where it was spawned. And there it mates—and then it dies.”
His voice ceased. Harper was still turning in her place to follow him. But he was playing with her. When he spoke again, he was once more behind her.
“What I mean is, it’s an awfully long way to travel for love—and then death. Isn’t it? But then the salmon can’t help itself. I think an instinct for self-destruction must be built into the nature of its desire. That’s what I’m getting at: some people are like that too. Maybe most people. You, for instance, come after me and after me because you can’t resist me, can you? Even knowing that I’m going to kill you. Is that a labored metaphor? It just popped into my mind.”
“A little. It’s a little labored.” Harper had to moisten her lips before she could say any more. “But since we’re in it, I do seem to recall that the salmon, just before it dies, grows fangs to fight with.”
He laughed happily. “You do remember.” And he lit a match.
An explosion of red blindness. Her hand flew up. Then, shadowy vision came seeping in from the edges … Grotesque stone heads sculpted on the encircling arcade. A demon, a satyr, a dead-eyed king. Staring at her from between the arches’ columns. A tortured soul with a beast’s jaws clamped to him. A twisted nose-picker, a grieving peasant. Head after Gothic head. And now, the light dwindling, Harper, lowering her eyes against the glare, saw the effigies of dead crusaders at her feet.
And then she looked up at Iago.
He was holding the match to a candle wick now, looking from the flame to her, smiling wryly. And the moment she saw his face in the yellow glow, she remembered what it was about him.
He was not only a handsome man, with his slim, straight figure in the white suit, his long black hair, his sharply faceted face and those smoky, hypnotic eves. There was something else. A certain unbridled, animal vitality, a pent energy in every movement he made; a kind of ease and confidence; a fluid comfort in his own skin. He was all alive, and the world sat so lightly on him.
It was an attractive quality. Standing there in the respiring flame light, Harper had to fight to remember what he’d looked like when she’d seen him last. That night after she’d crept from her bed in the cult’s compound. After she’d pushed the branches aside and peered into the clearing. There he’d stood. In the mists of the Argentine jungle, in the flare of the bonfire. His acolytes chanting. The mother shrieking through her gag. His own face mad, exalted, as he lifted the curved blade. And the child lying trustingly on the altar before him. His own child.
Twenty-five years she had hunted him for that. She had to remember it now.
The candle caught. He held it up. He held it out to her with one green-gloved hand, drawing his long hair clear of his cheek with the other. He moved the flame to and fro slowly in front of her, examining her minutely, as if she were some statue he had discovered in a cave. She stood like a statue, clutching her stick—so tightly that the ears of the dragon bit into her hand. But she shrank inwardly, wishing to hide herself under her hat, behind her glasses. She knew what he was seeing—every sag, every wrinkle, every premature, flaccid pouch of flesh.
“Oh, Harper,” he said at last. “You’ve grown so old.”
And it stung her. In spite of everything. Still, she managed to answer him with a frown like granite thunder. “It’s been twenty-five years.”
“Oh yes, I know, but really.” He pursed his lips. “You’ve gotten all … grim and wrinkly.”
“Ah. Well.”
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“I’m afraid it was.”
He laughed. “Because of me, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Poor baby. All because I showed you who you are.”
“You showed me who I could be, Jacob, who I might be,” Harper said. “You showed me who you are.”
He laughed again. And stretched, spreading his arms like Christ. The candle in his hand lifted a dim, yellow dome of light over the church’s round: the gaping sculpted heads; the effigies in their tormented postures on the floor.
Stretched like that, he resumed pacing gracefully around her, looking her up and down, his tongue in his cheek.
“Who I am,” he repeated slowly. “But really, darling—you always knew who I was.”
“No,” she tried to say, but the word caught in her throat.
“You did,” he said. “You knew. And yet I seem to recall I was your lover.”
Harper forced herself to stand still as he circled. The glow of the candle passed and faded from before her. He was behind her now, out of sight. It made the skin prickle on the back of her neck. She had to fight to keep her exterior steady and stern as her insides churned, molten.
“I—was—your—lover,” he insisted.
“If that’s what you call love,” she shot back.
He stopped at last, beside her. Just beside her. She felt his breath on her cheek. Hot, wet, rank. A panther’s breath. He went on in the same easy, ironical tone.
“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s not mince words. I was your master. Wasn’t I?”
Harper’s lips worked as she tried to swallow her distaste.
“I mastered you, Harper,” he continued softly. “I mastered you, and then you begged me to master you again. I remember the sound of your voice as you begged me.”
The words burst from her. “I was young.”
“Not that young.”
“And half insane.”
“Only half.”
“It was a long time ago, Jacob.”
“Not that long, really. You remember it too. I can see you do. You remember it in your flesh. Don’t you?”
She barely turned her head towards him. Barely lifted one corner of her mouth. She was afraid she would start to quake. “I remember. Yes.”
“And that’s why you can’t stay away from me. Even if it’s only to feel my hands on your throat.”
“You know why I’ve come after you,” she said.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah. I forgot. The children. The dear, dead little children. Tell yourself that’s the reason.”
“That is the reason.”
“For this obsession? For this compulsion to irritate me?”
“To destroy you, Jacob, actually. Yes.”
He let out a breath, threw up a hand. She flinched away from it. But it was only a gesture of mild frustration, the gesture of a teacher with a dense student. “You know, dear, I really did teach you to be more honest with yourself than that. I showed you how to plumb the ugly depths, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re going to stand there looking like my maiden aunt and tell me that you gave your life, you wasted your prime, you wore away your beauty, trailing after me—all because you cared so very, very deeply for a few armloads of dead babies?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, sweetie.”
She couldn’t hold it down any longer: a painful shudder went through her, head to toe. She had forgotten the weakness—the limp, physical weakness—that invaded her whenever he came this close.
No, she had not forgotten. She had fought to believe it was a thing of the past.
“Look at you,” he whispered. “Harper. Trembling. Look at you.”
She made a gulping noise. Rapped her stick convulsively upon the stone. “I …” she said. She took a breath. “I am not the woman I was, Jacob.”
“Oh no? Really? Then why are you here?”
He came swinging around in front of her. She could see him in the candlelight with his head tilted to one side, his smile gleeful, his black eyes smoky and seductive. He looked so vital to her, so relaxed, that she began to feel like a fusty old crone just standing there, frowning at him like this.
But she stood there. Frowned at him. And swallowed hard. “What do you want me to say?” she asked hoarsely. “You’re the philosopher, Jacob, not me. I only know …” She shook her head.
“What?” he said, smiling. “What do you know?”
“I know my spirit opposes you.”
“Your spirit! Oh my!”
“And not just my spirit.”
“Dear, dear. What more?”
“All of it,” she barked. “All of it opposes you. The …” She groped for words. “Oh, all right. The Everlasting Thing.”
Jacob Hope guffawed at her. Threw back his head, one hand on his belly, the other—the one holding the candle—held to his brow. Laughed and laughed, staggering where he stood, his feet among the dead crusaders. Then he shook his head. He daubed the corner of his eye. He wound down to a low chuckle.
And then—suddenly—he roared at her: “For Christ’s sake, woman—look!”
The curtain of his black hair crackled and fizzed as he held the candle up to his own face. The flame seemed to rise along his skin in a caress. The murky depths of his eyes seemed to turn like slow Catherine wheels. Her own image in them seemed to turn like Catherine.
She looked. And she saw that what she feared was true. What she had suspected since Storm had described him to her. It was impossible to deny it now.
He was a man of thirty—of thirty-five at most. As he had always been. As he had been the day she met him.
In all these years, he had not aged a single hour.
“I am the Everlasting Thing,” he said. “I feed on the marrow of time. I was here before the oceans turned black with life, and when the deserts are white with death I will remain. And you’re really starting to get up my nose, Harper,” he went on in his normal tone. “So maybe you ought to reconsider your position.”
Whoosh—he blew out the candle. Harper hissed, recoiling, as the inky air clamped over her. There was only his voice again now; that harsh breath; that feral smell. The dark.
“Oh, Harper, Harper, Harper. You really can piss me off at times. I swear, after Argentina, I wanted to kill you. Oh …”
In that blackness, he made a noise, a low growly hum, a sound of such sensual hunger that she felt certain he was going to kill her right now.
But he went on: “That’s just the sort of debilitating woman you are, you know. You made me doubt my own destiny. Almost. But—but, but—I still had the Grail. The blue flower, the blue stone. I still had more than enough of it, and that’s what brought me to my senses. I mean, when a fellow just buys something like that—just picks it up wandering through a Moroccan bazaar—that’s not just chance, that can’t just be chance. Whatever you say. ‘There will arise one who will become the eternal creature.’ That was the prophecy. So, in spite of what you managed to do to me, I knew I’d been chosen. I knew that. And I lay low.” A tone of self-congratulation had entered his voice. He was bragging to her, Harper realized. “I lay low. Patience, patience. And sure enough, just five years later, in a little place off the Edgware Road—on the road to Damascus, Harper—like a flash: a spilled soda, and the next stage was given to me. The trail of stories. Oh, I know you know. Well, let me tell you, darling, it’s been twenty years. I had to wait twenty years before I could follow that trail to its end. Patience, patience, though my time ran short. And just when things were getting desperate, just at the brink of disaster, the wall came tumbling down and my destiny was all before me again. All before me. And now—again—you …!”
She was scorched by the word. He must’ve leaned within inches of her. Even in darkness so complete, she thought she could make out the glint of his stare. “I can see how far you’ve come on the same slender thread. And well, why not? I taught you everything you know, didn’t I? I’m proud of you, old girl. I admire you for it. In fact, I admire you so much that if I thought for a second one chance remained, that even one copy of the final text was still in existence, so help me, so help me, I would give myself the pleasure: I would grind your bones to make my bread.”
Again, his breath burned her. Her hand spasmed, jerked, her stick tip ticking twice on the stone. Why didn’t he? Why didn’t he just do it? In spite of everything, her curiosity almost made her ask aloud. But she mustn’t. It might tempt him. It might give him ideas. For the sake of her life, she must force herself to keep silent.
It seemed to provoke him. He snarled: “You think I can’t?”
“Why don’t you?” she blurted out. What a foolish, foolish old woman. “Why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you just kill me?”
He drew away. The heat of his breath diminished, at least. But no, he had retreated from her, she could feel it. She stood where she was, staring after him, seeing nothing. She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry as dust.
“It’s the boy, isn’t it?” she said softly. “You want the boy. Our boy. You need him somehow. Not just his life. You need him with you, you need him on your side. That’s it, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Jacob?” He made no answer. Where was he? She couldn’t tell. She took an unsteady step forward, called after him in the darkness. “If you killed me, he would know. He would know it was you. If I were hit by a car, by lightning, drowned in the Thames—if I died in my sleep—he would still know who was to blame. And it’s the one thing he would never forgive you for. It’s the one thing that would keep him away from you forever. You don’t want to make me a martyr to him. You need him on your side. Isn’t that it? Isn’t it?”
But aside from her own frightened wheezing, there was no noise in the round, in the church anywhere.
“Jacob?”
Nothing. Nothing she could hear or see. And yet … And yet, the silence had a quality of motion. The emptiness, the blackness had a life. She could feel it, in the prickpoints of her skin, in the warp of her nerves. He was still there. He was stalking, circling around her. Closing in on her. There were shuffling footfalls on the stone—she could hear them. Coming towards her. He was closer with every moment. Gripping that curved knife she had seen in the jungle. Lifting it. She could hear the swishing upswing of the blade.
“Jacob!” she cried again, in terror this time, her voice trembling. The dragon stick fell from her slack fingers. It clattered on the stones. She grabbed her satchel, yanked it open. Drove her hand in, fumbling around. What a mess. She felt her glasses case. Her compact. A lipstick. Some tissues. Some receipts. Her keys. Half a Twix bar. Then her matches—she found them—she seized the box. Drew it out, the satchel dropping free on its strap. She heard herself panting as she fumbled for a stick. She struck it on her thumb. Again, there was the blinding flame. The shadows scrambling like rats. The round of the church. The staring heads on every side. The stone bodies of the knights at her feet. The long nave. The far altar, the faint glow of stained glass above …
But empty, all of it, otherwise. The entire place. Utterly empty. Except for her.
“Crikey,” she whispered.
And she grabbed her stick and got the hell out of there.